Since Kim Jong Eun took over as North Korea’s top leader after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in December, one of the unknowns for outside observers of the authoritarian regime was how its propaganda machine was going to handle the story of Kim Jong Eun’s mother.

Her name is Ko Young Hui and she had a life that’s difficult to square with the main narrative of the North’s propaganda, which portrays the Kim family as vanquishers of the Japanese occupiers and protectors of the pureblood Korean race.

Advertisement

Kim Jong Il’s mother Kim Jong Suk, who died when he was about eight years old, has been held up for decades by North Korea’s propaganda ministries as a “Great Mother” to the nation.

Mainichi

A screen grab by a Japanese newspaper of a film that shows Ko Yong Hui with her young son, Kim Jong Eun. The documentary marked the first time that many North Korean viewers have ever seen Kim Jong Eun’s mother. It’s unclear how many have seen it, though.

Over the weekend came news that the regime is attempting to fashion an image for Ko Young Hui.

Mainichi, a Japanese newspaper, on Sunday published a story about a 90-minute film about Ko Yong Hui that is being shown to some people in the North Korean elite. The film is called “The Mother of Great Military First Chosun.” (Chosun refers to Korea.)

The film compares Ms. Ko to Kim Jong Suk. It showed her learning to fire guns and cleaning one of the jumpsuits that Kim Jong Il always wore.

But it’s unclear how many people have been shown the film. And it’s unclear whether the film mentioned that Ms. Ko spent her youth in Osaka, Japan. She was born there in 1952 to a Korean couple who moved from Jeju Island to Japan in the 1920s.

As a teenager in the 1960s, she moved with her parents to North Korea. Recently, journalists in Japan have been scouring records to learn more about her parents.

One journalist recently reported that he believed he found evidence that Ms. Ko’s father worked for a company that made uniforms for the Japanese military during its expansion through the Pacific in the 1930s.

Ko Young Hui became a folk dancer and joined North Korea’s most prestigious dance company, called Mansudae Art Troupe. Working for them, she caught the eye of Kim Jong Il during a performance in the 1970s. She became the fourth woman he had children with and, by most accounts, the woman who Kim Jong Il loved the most.

They never married, however, and she was never depicted in the North Korean media with Kim Jong Il. She died of cancer in Paris in 2004.